Goose Genie is a 2D physics-based puzzle platformer that is currently being made in Spartasoft Studio for the Spring 2024 semester. The player plays as a Goose who has been turned into a Genie pot and they must track down and defeat the evil genie. The game has a rubberhose visual art style inspired by Cuphead and Steamboat Willie. The big gimmick of the game is that the player can switch between three different states of matter at will in order to solve puzzles and each state has its own special ability. Those states are: Solid, Liquid, and Gas. They each function differently and they are very fun to play as right now. Because the game is still being made, I currently do not have any images to add to showcase what has been made so far for the game. :(

Anyways, this is my first in my new position within Spartasoft Studio, Design Director. As a Design Director, I am responsible for working with my partner in order to make sure that the Design team is performing its best and working with the other teams. Right now, we have over 20 designers which is the biggest the team has ever been. My work on this game started before the semester began and it involved my partner and I making preliminary documents to help prepare for the game's development. The biggest document that we made is also our most important one, the mechanics spread sheet. We both noticed that Spartasoft Studio has an issue with scope on projects which leads to issues later on in development so, we decided to make a mechanics sheet that all team leads could see and approve mechanics for. This document had some preliminary ideas on it but then we asked our designers to come up with the actual mechanics that we could add to the sheet. We then chose the best mechanics and added them to the sheet with whatever documents and descriptions the designers gave us. This sheet has worked very well and has resulted in us as a Studio catching issues right now before they ruin something later on. Having all of the leadership read, comment on, and approve the mechanics has been great! So far, the sheet has been a great success and it is currently at feature-lock. The only issue that has arisen from this document is that programming might not have enough tasks but it's better to start with too little things to do instead of too many. But, we will cross that bridge when we get there.

As for what I have personally done without the assistance of my partner, I have mainly been interacting with all of the world teams, the player teams, and then the programming teams to make sure that everything is going smoothly. One particular thing that I did was suggest to all designers to be very verbose in their descriptions in order to prevent confusion with the artists, audio, and programmers that need to implement what they designed. I have also been working especially close with the Systems team in order to address any player issues and core game systems. Ultimately, I am letting them make their own decisions which they then share with my partner and I but I serve as a second opinion for that team due to my extensive knowledge of being a designer and also having lots of Unity programming experience.

So far, Goose Genie's development has been going along great and I've really been enjoying my time as Design Director for this semester! I can't wait to see the final game come together!